The issue of a Freedom of Information Act has been well covered in this blog (History of FOI in Tanzania and Why the OGP will fail without an FOI) and it is evident that there is a delay, whether intentional or unintentional, in introducing a bill that would give citizens the right to access information. Many local and international civil society organizations have lobbied the government over the past 6 years, since the first FOI Bill was introduced in 2006, to get acceptable FOI legislation passed without much success. The OGP commitment states that the government is studying best practices globally to determine how best to word the FOI Bill. This has already been down by an organization called Article19 which is a global forum to promote access of information and their model bill can be found here. Uhuru Blog also has a segment on the 9 principles which any good FOI Bill must adhere too.
Therefore keeping in mind the significant delay in introducing an FOI Bill, we rate this promise BROKEN
Unfair. The promise was just to study global best practice with a view to maybe, potentially producing a freedom of information act. The fact that an international NGO has already done so ir irrelevant. Do you want Tanzanian legislation drafted by international NGOs?
ReplyDeleteThe promise is not particularly robust, but it has not been broken.
In our view, the fact that recommendations were made by a Stakeholder coalition (made up of Tanzanian organizations) in 2007 and has still not been implemented 5 years later, makes this look like a deliberate attempt at delaying the Right to Access information.
ReplyDeleteWe have included the draft model bill from Article19 to point out that it is easy to make a Law that is all inclusive and grants citizens a genuine Right to Access Information i.e a best practices model has been drawn up and the government doesn't have to reinvent the wheel.
That being said, our tracker is not set in stone and ratings will change as and when the government fulfills its promises. But as things stand now, there is no FOI Bill in parliament nor one released for public discussion even after 5 years of recommendations from Tanzanian institutions and global best practices being available. Therefore this promise is rated BROKEN